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Projet DHARMA
, as seen in Rachel Blake's first video in The Lost Experience ARG]] The DHARMA Initiative (D'epartment of '''H'euristics 'A'nd 'R'esearch on 'M'aterial 'A'pplications '''Initiative) is a mysterious research project, which has a large presence on the Island. Most information on the project is derived from the orientation film found at the Swan DHARMA Initiative station and the ARG [[Lost Experience|The LOST Experience]]. The initiative was allegedly founded in 1970 by Gerald and Karen DeGroot, two doctoral candidates at the University of Michigan. It was or is financially backed by the mysterious Danish industrialist and munitions magnate, Alvar Hanso and his Hanso Foundation. The alleged purpose of the Initiative was to create "a large-scale communal research compound where scientists and free-thinkers from around the globe could pursue research in meteorology, psychology, parapsychology, zoology, electromagnetism, and utopian social-" Note: The last research subject of the initiative was not fully made clear in the Swan Orientation film and is unknown (some have suggested Utopian Social Engineering or Utopian Socialism). The Sri Lanka Video has revealed that the DHARMA Initiative was part of a project tied to the Valenzetti Equation. The purpose of the DHARMA Initiative on the island is to use scientific research to manipulate the environment to change any one of the core factors of the Valenzetti Equation in order to change the course of the human race. The Name right|thumb|The memory game, revealing the acronym. At first a complete riddle, the word DHARMA was revealed to be an acronym in an official LOST podcast. Later in the ARG [[Lost Experience|The LOST Experience]], through the clues of Rachel Blake (known as the hacker Persephone at that time), players were directed to play a memory game available at the Hanso Foundation's website. Gradually the acronym was revealed and at reaching level 42 (the largest of The numbers) the full acronym DHARMA was revealed as being "Department of Heuristics And Research on Material Applications". The acronym was later confirmed by an appearance in the Sri Lanka Video and an ABC press release http://www.disneyabctv.com/datvg_press/dispDNR.html?id=072506_12. Little is known what the actual explanation behind the name is, although a heuristic is a particular technique of directing one's attention in learning, discovery, or problem-solving.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heuristics Also, in the Sri Lanka Video, Alvar Hanso (standing in front of the DHARMA acronym) says "it also stands for the one true way". DHARMA Initiative Stations Main Article: DHARMA Initiative stations The DHARMA Initiative conducts its research and activities on the Island through a series of stations. Their specific purposes are largely unknown, but they seem to be the only signs of advanced civilization on the Island. They all have (or had) power and water supply as well as various kinds of equipment (e.g. machinery, living quarters, computers, medical equipment, ...). Each facility has its own, octagon-shaped logo. It was first assumed the orientation films indicates there are six stations (The Swan Orientation: 3 of 6; The Pearl Orientation: 5 of 6). However, the Blast Door Map and subsequent discovery of The Pearl station could indicate there are at least seven or even more stations. In the feature, "Secrets of the Hatch" on the Lost: The Complete Second Season DVD it is said that the Arrow is the first Hatch. This may be mistaken info, but it should be noted. Discovered Stations Presumed Stations The Door was presumed to be the hatch to another station, but when opened by Sayid in Live Together, Die Alone it was revealed to be a façade covering a rocky wall. Possible Stations These were documented on the Blast Door Map but not yet discovered: * The Flame, Station #4. * Two stations labeled with "C3?" and "C4?". * A seventh station that was crossed out. It may not have been built, or might have been destroyed, or might be the presumed station The Door. * There may be four smaller facilities, labeled CV I, CV II, CV III, and CV IV. DHARMA Initiative Orientation Films To instruct its members, the DHARMA Initiative has created several orientation films. Known films are: * The Swan Orientation Film - Instructing the Swan Station's inhabitants about the protocol, supposedly as a consequence of an unspecified incident. The films includes a short history of the Initiative. * The Pearl Orientation Video - Instructing Pearl Station inhabitants on monitoring The Swan station. * The Psychology Test Orientation Video - Revealed in the LOST experience. * The video filmed in the Sri Lanka Video - Allegedly created in 1975, provides a broader history and overview of DHARMA. DHARMA Initiative Members Known members of the DHARMA Initiative are: * Alvar Hanso - Funder of the Initiative, and narrator of the overall orientation video from 1975. * Gerald and Karen DeGroot - The Initiative's founders. * Marvin Candle/Mark Wickmund - A man who instructs the orientation films, found in The Swan and The Pearl, he identifies himself in the films as, respectively, Marvin Candle and Mark Wickmund. * Radzinsky - Occupant of The Swan station. * Kelvin Inman - Occupant of The Swan station, former spook. DHARMA Initiative Logos Main article: DHARMA Logos The DHARMA initiative is represented by a series of distinct 8-sided logos. These octagon-shaped logos used by the Initiative appear on many items and are seen in the various DHARMA Initiative stations on the island; they also featured in the orientation films. The logos are all based on an octagonal design incorporating eight trigrams surrounding a central symbol. The central symbol is unique for each station. The design of the logo was derived from a Chinese concept known as "Bagua". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagua_%28concept%29 Status of the DHARMA Initiative The current status of the Initiative is unknown. Hugh McIntyre, head of marketing and promotion for The Hanso Foundation stated the DHARMA Initiative was cancelled in 1987. He made these claims in an interview on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, broadcast on 24 May 2006, and also claimed that the information shown on the TV show Lost is fictional. However in the Sri Lanka Video, filmed by Rachel Blake in July 2006, Thomas Mittelwerk is seen showing several people a DHARMA Initiative orientation video, suggesting that the project might still be active in some form. The Swan station on The Island also received supplies with DHARMA-branded food and necessities up to at least December 2004 and Kelvin Inman is known to have joined the DHARMA Initiative after the Gulf War in 1991, both indicating that the Initiative did not end its operations as McIntyre has implied. In a hacked section of the Hanso Foundation website on June 19, the hacker Rachel Blake (Persephone) posted a message, questioning the status of the DHARMA Initiative and its members. In the Sri Lanka Video, Thomas Mittelwerk claims "we all know what happened - the DHARMA Initiative failed." Cultural References * The word Dharma comes from a Sanskrit word that literally means "to hold" * The word Dharma means "moral duty" - literally "to hold" a person to his/her purpose. * In Hinduism and Buddhism, dharma is: ** In Eastern religion, Dharma (Sanskrit धर्म) means Natural Law or Reality, or the "Way of the Higher Truths". *** The principle or law that orders the universe. *** Individual conduct in conformity with this principle. *** The essential function or nature of a thing. ** In Hinduism ***Individual obligation with respect to caste, social custom, civil law, and sacred law. ** In Buddhism *** The body of teachings expounded by the Buddha. *** Knowledge of or duty to undertake conduct set forth by the Buddha as a way to enlightenment. *** One of the basic, minute elements from which all things are made. *** Teaching - the lessons given to the student by the teacher *** The Path of the Teaching - the journey of the student that ends ultimately in the alleviation of suffering and/or the undoing of karma *** Ultimate Reality - the realization that the most fundamental element of the universe is happiness, bliss, or Nirvana Trivia * During DJ Dan's 7/05 podcast, a listener by the name of Anthony called in saying that in the 70s his grandmother joined a what he thought was a cult. He said that the cult was called the "KARMA Imperative", although he probably meant to say the DHARMA Initiative but simply misspoke the name. According to Anthony's story, his grandmother joined the "KARMA Imperative" while attending the University Michigan and was taken to an unknown location in the South Pacific and was never seen again, declared dead. Theories Regarding Possible Connections to “The Others”… * The Others are really part of the DHARMA Initiative performing experiments on the island inhabitants. * In "Maternity Leave" it was revealed that The Others are deceiving the survivors. This might mean that the Dharma Initiative is still active on the island and conducting their experiments. They may still be sponsored by the Hanso Foundation. Tom has appeared without a beard and was looking fresh with clean clothes. However, we don't know what happened after Claire escaped. It appeared to be a full scale evacuation of the Medical Station. * The Others are just remnants of the original DHARMA Initiative. Their current activities have little to do with the original mission. The May 1, 2006 podcast seems to hint at this. * The DHARMA Initiative was remade into the Others by Him. Regarding the Initiative’s Status… * The Initiative may not exist at all but be part of a Skinner Box-like experiment on the people on the island. * The fact that fresh supplies are still being dropped to the island also suggests links are still maintained with the outside world and the Dharma Initiative is still active and on going. * Additionally, Kelvin tells Desmond that he joined the Dharma Initiative, which must have been in the early 1990s because it was after he served in the Gulf War. This is further proof that the Initiative was not canceled in 1987 as claimed by Hugh McIntyre. ** Similarly, The Hanso Foundation could be lying about their current connections to DHARMA and is still actively funding it under tight scrutiny. * The initiative has lost control of some of their experiments/activities on the island * Did the Initiative fail prior to the crash, or as a result of something the survivors do in future seasons? * No specific cancellation date was specified by Hugh McIntyre, besides the year 1987. So did the cancellation of the Initiative - or a change from its original objectives - coincide with the arrival and subsequent deaths of Rousseau's team? Sayid's estimate that she had been there for sixteen years (since 1988, if the plane crashed in 2004) was based on very rough mental calculations - he could easily have miscalculated by several months. Rousseau's second transmission, heard in The Long Con suggests that her team met a group as yet unidentified island residents. These may have been members of the Dharma Initiative. * The Blast Door Map suggests that Hugh McIntyre's claim that DHARMA Initiative was cancelled in 1987 could be partially true. The map appears to be an attempt to piece together a history of the DHARMA Initiative, based on the limited information available to Kelvin and Radzinsky. It doesn't mention any significant DHARMA-related events occurring on The Island between the mid-1980's and the 2000's. Indeed, it suggests that several DHARMA facilities were damaged, shut down, or abandoned as a result of catastrophes that occurred in the early to mid-1980's. These events may have convinced the Hanso Foundation that the Initiative was destined to fail. By 1987, they may have decided to cancel all active DHARMA research projects while leaving only the Swan Station running, so as to prevent an electromagnetic disaster. They may have continued to send personnel and supply drops to the Swan well into the 2000's, even though no active research was being done there. As has been speculated elsewhere, The Others could be DHARMA personnel and/or test subjects who were abandoned after the Initiative was cancelled. Regarding the Initiative’s Goals… * The DHARMA history presented in the orientation film is completely untrue, and only presented as an "explanation" as to why the residents of the hatch need to push the button. * The DHARMA Initiative covers an Eternal Life program, and the purpose of crashing the plane on the island was to have the human genes available for cloning and eternal life experiments. ** This could be a reason why The Others want to capture only children and "good people". * A program designed to improve the quality of life of human beings by accelerating the path to enlightenment. * DHARMA consists of scientists with an egalitarian ideology: ** The initiative is based on the notion that with scientific experimenting they can create a utopian society where everybody is given an equal opportunity in life. Equality for them means that everyone is depending on each other to the same degree and that no one is redundant. They believe in the duality of existence, that all human beings have a need to experience domination in its completion, both being the one in power and the one subjected to power. They also believe that all human beings have a desire to depend on someone and at the same time wants someone to depend on them, that these are basic human needs. In fact, so important to us are these needs that if taken away, life loses its purpose. ** The unseen leaders of DHARMA are at the front of a privately funded revolution in genetic technology. To control the body of their society they need to own each body of each individual living in that society. People who sacrifice themselves for others are by DHARMA considered good. Self sacrifice means they possess a high level of empathy and conscience which speaks of a high moral and loyalty for a society that imposes on the freedom of the individual for a greater good. While creating an outer utopia in society, they are simultaneously constructing an internal utopia by retrieving human raw material in the form of the building stones of life – DNA and RNA. Hereditary traits are selected from those that they value as exceptionally fit or "special". Part of the experiment is if happiness can be manufactured and if coming generations can be guaranteed to feel free and content by being designed in vitro. ** The experimenting is taking place underground in a hunt for "perfection", to end all suffering. Yet the story unfolding in Lost proves that we need suffering in order to find ourselves. Regarding the Government… * DHARMA is an U.S. Army BlackOp. Regarding the Map… * They possibly have wired the the island with an intranet called DharmaTel. * The "DI" in DI 9FFTR731 likely stands for DHARMA Intiative. * The Dharma Initiative may have eight stations. Each Dharma logo has the same eight characters surrounding it, and each character is unique. Also, as revealed in The Lost Experience, The Hanso Foundation is currently working on a Spider Protocol. Spiders have eight legs, which works with the theory. Plus, if you add all the possible stations in the Blast Door Map together, including the ?' in its center, there are eight known stations on the island. * Some of the notes on the blast door map might refer to meteorological experiments conducted by the DHARMA Initiative. ** "Mountainous terrain most likely used by D.I.H.G. for meteorological research due to..." + ** "Geological composition likely to cause magnetic interference with weather project" Regarding the Initiative’s Name * ''Dharma means "moral duty". Immanuel Kant was a philosopher who worked very much on "moral duty" in his time. He also argued that the source of the good lies not in anything outside the human subject, either in nature or given by God, but rather only in a good will.Kant was also influenced by other philosophers such as '''Rousseau and John Locke. Gallery Image:OHGE.png|1975 copyright card image:DHARMA_film.jpg|Caption in 1975 film Image:DHARMAlogocaptured.jpg|Capture of the DHARMA Initiative logo from the 1975 film. Category:Unsolved Category:DHARMA Initiative